


Jewel

by Dragonsquill (dragonsquill)



Series: Hobbit ABCs [10]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Bittersweet, Gen, Prompt Fic, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 19:24:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4275135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonsquill/pseuds/Dragonsquill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fíli knows what he’s meant to live for.</p><p>He’s been raised on stories of the mountain, of the depths of Erebor, the river of gold.  He’s seen sketches drawn from memory, and tried to imagine the huge caverns and endless passages in his mind’s eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jewel

Fíli knows what he’s meant to live for.

He’s been raised on stories of the mountain, of the depths of Erebor, the river of gold. He’s seen sketches drawn from memory, and tried to imagine the huge caverns and endless passages in his mind’s eye.

Not a day of his childhood has gone by without a song or a memory or a tale of the Lonely Mountain and his family’s right to rule there. Even now, almost a full adult, he hears the stories from Dwalin or Thorin in the alehouse or from the miners when he makes his assigned rounds. Though he was born on the road and considers Ered Luin his home, Fíli and the others born since the great loss are surrounded by the Lonely Mountain.

So many of his people’s hearts lay buried deep in the golden mines of Erebor.

And the greatest loss of all, the heart of the mountain, Thorin’s heart, the Arkenstone; that he hears about rarely, and only in his uncle’s deep voice, thick with loss. No other dwarf will speak of the captivating magnificence of the Arkenstone, though he’s heard a whisper – once, in the inn, a noble too deep in his cups – of how its glow can drive a king to madness. 

Of how his grandfather would have died for it.

He listens. He always listens, both by nature and by training. 

Fíli listens, but he doesn’t understand.

When he wakes in the night, breath coming in uneven gasps and visions of a great jewel in his mind, pile of gold, and the echo of screams, he isn’t sure he wants to.

In the deep hours of dark, with the iron mines still rumbling below his boots, Fíli escapes from the stone and archways into the cool, sweet air of autumn.

He tilts his head, lets the wind lift his hair from his cheeks, the click of dwarven metal against his jaw. Fresh air, untouched by metal and stone, sweat and fire. It feels like…

Home.

Fili climbs to a spot he found years before, shortly after his people finally moved to the interior of their new mountain. It is near one of the mountain’s hidden entrances, where grass grows on a small ledge. It is soft, and private, and just-

-Open.

The sky spreads above him, so distant it could never be shaped by dwarven hands. And scattered there among it, the stars, the moon, a dozen stories of villains and heroes that whispered him to sleep in those long years on the road.

He’s never brought anyone with him, not even Kíli. He doesn’t need his little brother to know-

He’s not meant to want this.

He raises his hands, watching the stars twinkle between his fingers, the distant jewels of the maker.

He dreams of the Arkenstone, and madness, of digging deep and living in caverns of stone and dark. 

And he escapes to the open air and the open sky that is meant to frighten his people.

One day, Fíli will be king, and he will have to trade these stars for a stone that drives dwarves mad. 

Slowly, Fíli closes his hand, and the stars disappear behind his knuckles and wrist, a surrounding of dark, like the far-off ceiling of a great cavern.


End file.
